SEEK26: An Unexpected Surprise
On a more personal note than my last post about SEEK26, I want to discuss how the Lord was moving in my own prayer while I was at the conference.
If you didn't read my last post, I didn't even plan to attend SEEK26.
Connor Trout
With seminarian passes costing over $500, sharing an airbnb, parking my car downtown, and eating out for dinner every evening, I didn't want to financially commit to going to SEEK. Initially, I was just going to stay in my friend's apartment while he was staying downtown for the conference. I planned to get some leisurely reading done and hang with friends in the evenings.
After attending the Pontifical High Mass, I began to feel the FOMO building. Later that evening, I just sat in one of the convention center hotel lobbies and waited to get dinner. I ran into a few friends and decided to impulse buy a pass for the next day. It was a whopping $225, but that actually wasn't that big of an investment.
One of the main purposes of attending SEEK is to network and reconnect with old friends. I was able to reconnect with more people than I could have possibly predicted in just one day. So in my eyes, I only had to spend about a quarter of what the originally proposed SEEK trip required.
This ended up being one of the best decisions that I have made in years. Besides reconnecting with tons of friends, the Lord actually had something in mind for me too despite the spontaneity of the whole trip.
I was able to attend a whole day of talks and keynotes. They were pretty good, but none of them rocked my world. The biggest moment of shock for me was when Scott Hahn said that in a recent, random poll, only 42% of Catholics knew that Genesis was the first book of the Bible... The Protestant stereotypes about Catholics and Scripture still remain true, I guess.
The moments of encounter for me came from three main places:
- Describing how my prayer has changed since joining the seminary
- Saturday Night Confession
- Saturday Night Adoration
Describing My Prayer to Others
If you have read about my prayer life on this blog, then I have nothing new to share with you in this regard. However, there was something quite nice about others asking how the seminary has changed me. If I would have been given this prompt before a holy hour and tried to journal with it, I would have overthought it and likely gotten frustrated.
This was not the scenario that presented itself, however.
I had to give an answer to this question on about 4-5 different occasions. Fortunately, the Holy Spirit was able to help inspire good, choice words. In summary, I said that the Lord has taught me how to be faithful just as Christ was faithful to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. I gave a homily about this about a year ago:
Connor Trout
I think that I felt compelled to share this as my answer because this message rarely makes it into college ministry. Perhaps it is because Our Lord seems to bless most college students with consolation when they develop a life of prayer. However, whenever students go home on break, most report that their prayer life suffers greatly. In my experience, the college missionary's response to that is typically something regarding "growing even closer to Christ."
This is true, but it can come off as gaslighting at times when one is told to "pray harder" when the poor experience of prayer is the very cause of their own sorrow. I think that my answer was very well received, but it was the fruit of the past 2.5 years of seminary formation.
Saturday Night Confession
Due to the chaos at the end of the fall semester, helping at all weekend Masses, Christmas and the holy day of obligation falling on Wednesdays, I was struggling to find confession times in my local area (I don't like confessing to priest friends from my own diocese). This meant that it had been a good 7-8 weeks since my last confession.
If my spiritual director finds this, mea culpa...
SEEK is well known for its abundant opportunities to go to confession. On day 3, they have all of the priests (300+ in number) grab their purple stole and hear confessions for the conference attendees. It is usually chaos, as you can see in this video:
I made sure to get in line before the evening keynotes started. I found that I was the only one in line somehow, and the confession room looked empty. At first, I walked out and accepted that I would have to wait until after the keynotes to find a priest. However, my friend told me to check again, and I spotted a man in a white habit in the corner. Lo and behold, it was a good priest friend of mine from the Mercedarian Friars! He used to visit the Ohio State Newman Center to celebrate Mass every couple of weeks.
Since there was no line, I was able to take my time and have a good confession / counsel with him. We talked about a lot of things, and he gave me some very solid advice and encouragement.
After I finished my confession, he looked at me and said,
"Connor, you will look forward to hearing many confessions!"
I replied, saying,
"Father, I can't wait! Please hold me accountable to that. The people need more access, and I want to help!"
With a clean soul, I was ready for Saturday night adoration...
Saturday Night Adoration
One of the highlight moments of SEEK is the night of adoration. There is something unique about adoration nights at these mega conferences that the Lord decides to bless. As the clergy processed the Blessed Sacrament to the altar, the Lord granted me the grace of 2-3 minutes of beautiful consolation. In that moment, I was given a profound image of the altar at my cathedral: St. John the Evangelist in downtown Cleveland.
There was something extremely life giving about this moment of prayer. I didn't hear anything specific to write down, but I felt a unique joy. It was a joy that I think the chosen ones feel on their judgment day. All of the parts of my formation journey that had felt dull, boring, and useless suddenly had great merit. I was so thankful that I had chosen faith and obedience to the Lord's voice. All of the pain of death to self that I have undergone in seminary suddenly felt extremely rational. Continuing in my pilgrimage to the altar is the only thing I can fathom doing in response to the glory I have experienced.
Despite having many reasons to fear judgment due to my lack of virtue, the Lord shared with me His delight. For the first time in many months, the Eucharist felt like a sacred person rather than a sacred object. It is one thing to treat a chalice or statue with the utmost care, but it is another to revere the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity unveiling Himself, even if it is just the slightest peek.
Going Forward
This experience will hopefully inspire a new devotion to prayer and recollection that I had lost throughout the year. With all of the busyness I had to manage, I let my interior devotion to God slowly fade in 2025. I have a much lighter course load this upcoming semester, so I pray that I may respond to this gift of time with utmost generosity. I already outlined my goals in my New Year post, but I now have even more encouragement to pursue them.
Connor Trout